Dreamers and Fighters was the work of my
mother, Sophie-Louise. She was a social worker, an artist, a
brilliant story teller, and, in the last 10 years of her life,
a filmmaker. What follows is her account of the origins of the
Dreamers and Fighters documentary project – the story of my
grandmother's union, the New York City Teacher's Union, a
grassroots, rank-and-file union whose members were among the
city's most committed, progressive, and visionary educators.
Although my mother isnt here to see it, we remain committed
to completing this film and telling their story. —Ginny Browne

Click on the
images to view a larger image of Sophie-Louise's interview in
the Riverdale Press

A Personal History of the NYC Teacher Purges

By Sophie-Louise Ullman

Sophie-Louise Ullman

As a child of two New York City public school
teachers, I became aware sometime during the 1950s that
deep secrets surrounded a number of my mother's close
friends, people who were no longer teaching. Gradually I
found out what the secrets were, and why, in the climate
of that time, they were not to be discussed openly.

Who knew, during the decade of Joseph McCarthy, that
the New York City Board of Education, with the
enthusiastic assistance of the FBI and the NYPD,
maintained a stable of citizen-spies to help the board
rid New York's schools of teachers who were, according
to its own evaluations, among the finest the city ever
had?

Who remembers today? What lessons could the teachers
—
several hundred here in New York, and many more in urban
centers around the country — have taught about the
purges, about the workings of the machinery of
persecution, had their stories not been swept under the
rug of history? What forces converged to silence them?

I have carried these questions with me all my life.
It was unlikely that telling the story of the New York
City Teachers Union (not the United Federation
of Teachers) would fall to the daughter of
rank-and-filers untrained as a filmmaker. But it became
obvious several years ago that it was way past time and
almost past opportunity to tell it.

Impassioned and aged Teachers Union veterans have been
eager to correct history's "master narrative" and to
bring the real story into the light of public discourse.
Rescuing their experiences from the archival oblivion of
the past four decades has been a roller coaster we could
not anticipate when our little team undertook this
mission.

Swimming against the tide of institutional resistance
for the last several years, we have come to understand the scope and perniciousness of
McCarthyism's legacy to America. It has profoundly
narrowed the spectrum of what is acceptable, not only
for policy, but also for debate and even for thought and
collective memory.

Sophie-Louise Ullman and Sam Wallach, Henry Foner in
background

We are determined to bring the documentary,
Dreamers and Fighers to the screen, and to give
everyday citizens the chance to consider their own
history and determine for themselves: who benefited and
who lost by the purging of educators and the killing of
a militant union? What is the cost to society when
uncritical conformity is rewarded and dissent is
punished? How will our answers NOW affect
tomorrow's America?

Lori Styler:
Dreamers & Fighters
Producer

In addition to her
on-going work as producer on the documentary,
Dreamers and Fighters: The NYC Teacher Purges, Lori
Styler is an entertainment journalist. She’s written for
New York Magazine and other media-related magazines and
newspapers. She has been a TV talent coordinator, and has
worked at publicity departments at CBS, ABC TV, and Paramount
Pictures. She has also worked as publicist for several
Off-Broadway shows and is an Actor’s Equity Association stage
manager.

Click on the
images below to view full versions of the Dreamers and
Fighters Commemorative Program

Documentary in Production

Progress Report by Producer Lori Styler

May Day seemed like the right day to launch a Web site
about a union that made history. Alas, this domain name was
registered just days earlier on April 26th -- an
equally appropriate day for its arrival -- my aunt, Doris
Styler Ullman's birthday. She was a NYC Teachers Union
member and this documentary came to fruition because of her.

A dedicated teacher and activist, she rarely went to bed
before writing a letter about an injustice that needed to be
exposed because it, “just wasnt right.”

Her daughter, my cousin, Sophie-Louise, inherited her
spirit of righting injustice and, together, we decided to
co-produce this documentary to pay homage to all the
Teachers Union members who stood up and fought for
children's needs and rights, and, eventually, their own,
when doing so was not only unpopular, but dangerous.

We always felt we were in the presence of heroes.
And it was humbling. During one interview, Ann Matlin, who
had been a fifth grade teacher in Harlem, looked at the
camera conspiratorially and said, “I've never told this
story before.” And then she went on to reveal a “crime.” It
was one of the more courageous stories told. Her video
clip sets up the scenario, and her biography reveals the
story.

Harold Cammer, counsel for many of the fired teachers,
tells the story about taking the interrogator, Asst.
Corporation Counsel Saul Moskoff, out to the theater at the
height if the blacklist. He took him to see Arthur Miller's
play, The Crucible.

“I thought if he saw it, he would understand what he was
doing.”

They emerged from the theater and Moskoff turned and
said, “It has nothing to do with us. We have nothing to do
with academic freedom. We have to do with a criminal
conspiracy.”

On the Web site's first full day, April 27th,
Teachers Union member and renowned author/mathematician,
Irving Adler, wrote to me. We had interviewed him in his
Vermont home for the documentary, and while Sophie-Louise
and the crew were setting up for her interview, Irving, ever
the mathematics teacher, took me into his garden that fall
afternoon, picked up a pine cone and noting the continuing
spirals, explained Fibonacci numbers to me.

This day, he wrote, “I am now in my 97th year.
Ninety-seven is a prime number. I am now in my prime.”

All the TU members we met during the production of
Dreamers & Fighters were always prime champions of
student causes. They fought on the front lines, picketed for
better school conditions for their students in deprived
areas of New York City, and campaigned for better working
conditions for teachers on the front steps of the Capitol in
Albany.

They dreamed of equal opportunities and imagined a world
of true academic and social freedoms. They fought to create
those opportunities for the children of NYC, by building new
schools to replace crumbling ones despite the war-time
building freeze in the city. They created shoe funds for
poor kids and instituted Negro History Week which lead to
other racial and ethnic heritage celebrations. They fought
to reduce class size and, eventually, they had to fight for
themselves.

When we first told these blacklisted teachers that we
wanted to interview them, many greeted us with the same
sentiment: “We have been asked so often to tell our story,
but we've never seen it told. It's so painful to talk about
what happened to us – are you sure you'll really do this?”
With our best intentions, we assured them we would.

As we received more grants, we'd film more teachers. We
had screenings along the way for the teachers who we thought
might not make it till the end to see the finished product.
We didnt expect that to include one of us. On one random
day, Sophie-Louise, passionate about telling this story
looked at me and said, “If anything ever happens to me,
you'll finish this, wont you?” Very unexpectedly, that came
to pass.

Well, I intend to do that. Sophie-Louise always spoke
about producing this, not just for an audience that would
have agreed or not with the politics of the TU, but for a
population sure that to be a socialist or a communist meant
one was alien — a dangerous and scary person.

We wanted those people to see these teachers for what
they accomplished. By protesting, creating strong
parent-teacher alliances, organizing community support
groups and just enduring in a hostile political arena, they
created and maintained services, resources and hope in
communities that, without these teachers, would have been
deprived a voice.

Many members were reflective when questioned about the
Teachers Union coming to an end. Some acknowledged that
their unyielding political approaches to acquiring better
conditions for their students might have, instead,
jeopardized their chances of achieving them during that era.

We have over fifty hours of interviews with over 20
teachers, their families, their legal counsel, historians,
and one FBI operative. We still have much to finish, but
we've had much support.

Henry Foner, a dismissed high school teacher and
activist, came to be a wonderful and indispensable friend of
ours. When Sophie-Louise and I started filming, we found our
way to Henry. He immediately shared his extensive contact
list with us, brought Sam Wallach and others in to help, and
formed a group called Teachers in Support of Dreamers
and Fighters: The NYC Teacher Purges. As a result, so
many of the teachers themselves greatly supplemented the
grants we received. Henry has returned as we've regrouped
with a new support team including Irving Adler, and CUNY
Professor and TU biographer Clarence Taylor, and Chair of
CUNY's Academic Freedom Committee Steve Leberstein.

I have a new crew, as well. Lisa Harbatkin is a writer
whose parents were also TU members. She has written an
article about her parents' TU story and has been an
immeasurable help in resurrecting this story. Ginny Browne,
Doris Ullman's granddaughter, who, as a teenager, went along
with her mother on some of the film shoots, is carrying on
our family's heritage. Ginny has worked as a community
organizer and is now a union activist. She is bringing her
mother's voice and conscience, as well as her own, to our
current work on the documentary.

We are still fundraising so we can keep our promises to
Sophie-Louise whose mission it was to tell this story, and
to the teachers who gradually came to feel safe sharing
their stories. We continue to look for the truths in the
Board of Education's archival files in the City of New York
where this story is still buried treasure.

If you are part of the Teachers Union family and would
like to contribute towards seeing your story told, a
filmmaker who can contribute in-kind services as we film the
final segments of the documentary, or a producer willing to
invest in a little-known piece of history, and this
compelling story, please e-mail us at
info@dreamersandfighters.com.

Non-profit, tax-exempt
contributions
to help complete the documentary
can be made out to our fiscal
sponsor,
Women Make Movies.
On the memo line of your check, you must include: Dreamers and Fighters: The NYC Teacher Purges